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Channel NewsAsia 22 Mar 05 World Water Day puts precious resource in spotlight A UN-backed International Decade for Water has kicked off with addresses, media-friendly demonstrations and awards aimed at drawing attention to the plight of the world's most plentiful but most abused resource. Placed under the banner "Water for Life," the decade seeks to lobby support for the United Nations' Millennium Goals, which hope to halve the number of people without access to clean drinking water or sanitation by 2015. Some 2.4 billion people have no toilets or sewers, and 1.1 billion do not even have drinkable water. Every day, an estimated 22,000 people, half of them children, die of diseases borne by polluted water, such as typhoid, cholera, malaria and diarrhoea. In countries stricken by shortage, the start of the water decade -- coinciding with the annual World Water Day -- took on special significance. In Thailand, King Bhumipol Adulyadej personally supervised a cloud-seeding operation -- in which chemicals are shot at clouds to encourage rainfall -- to alleviate a drought that has afflicted 71 out of 76 provinces, drying up reservoirs and baking rice paddies. In Beijing, the city warned that a severe water shortage would prompt a further hike in water prices, by up to 20 percent, after an increase of 25 percent in 2004. "Water is a strategic and precious resource, so water prices will continue to rise," said the head of the Beijing Water Service Bureau, Jiao Juzhang. Other countries worried by regional droughts today include Portugal, France, Brazil and Uganda. Scientists say that the risk of shortages, but also floods, is bound to amplify in the coming years as global warming affects traditional rainfall patterns. In Paris, leaders of the French environmental party the Greens defied city regulations to bathe in the River Seine to draw attention to the problem of heavy metals, pesticides and fertiliser runoff from farms and industry. Party secretary Yann Wehrling, dressed in a blue and black wetsuit, said the demonstration cocked a snook at French President Jacques Chirac. "In 1977 and again in 1998, Jacques Chirac said he would take a swim in the Seine because it was so clean. He still hasn't done it," said Wehrling. "We did, but we donned rubber suits for protection because the water is still a little dangerous for bathing." Nearby, European and African delegates attended a UNESCO conference to assess water problems in Africa. The continent paradoxically has some of the mightiest rivers in the world, but its populations also have the greatest need for fresh water. In an opening message to the meeting, Chirac noted that demographic growth "is exacerbating tensions" in countries crossed by the Nile, Congo and Niger rivers. "Water is abundant in Africa but unequally shared," Chirac said, as he urged a "fresh mobilisation of the international community" to fix such problems. The Millennium Goals on water were spelt out in 2000 and reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. The promises have so far proved empty, because UN members made no provision for the hundreds of billions of dollars of new investments needed. To meet the targets would mean providing sanitation for more than 300,000 additional people every day and clean water for nearly 150,000 a day. But public aid for water projects declined from 2.7 billion dollars (two billion euros) in 1997 to only 1.4 billion dollars in 2002, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and has stagnated at that level ever since. In fact, less than five percent of multilateral development aid goes to water projects. That has placed the emphasis on the privatisation of water resources and distribution -- a politically contentious issue in many countries -- and on finding novel ways of harnessing water supplies and channelling them to poor people. In Sweden, an Indian environmental organization, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), on Tuesday was named winner of the annual 150,000-dollar (114,000-euro) Stockholm Water Prize for its work on rainwater harvesting. The organization will receive its prize from the hands of King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony at Stockholm's City Hall in August. - AFP PlanetSave 22 Mar 05 Water, sanitation key to disaster response, long-term development GENEVA (AP) The lack of major outbreaks of disease in areas hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami is largely due to the rapid deployment of clean water and sanitation teams, the international Red Cross said Tuesday. In a statement marking World Water Day, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the response provided a dramatic demonstration of the need for clean water. But the resource is also essential for longer-term chronic shortages in the developing world, the federation and other international organizations said. The United Nations says more than 1.1 billion people around the world lack safe water, and 2.4 billion have no access to sanitation, leading to over 3 million deaths every year. ``People who can turn on a tap and have safe and clean water to drink, to cook with and to bathe in often take it for granted, and yet more than 1 billion of our fellow human beings have little choice but to use potentially harmful sources of water,'' said Dr. Lee Jong-Wook, head of the World Health Organization. The Red Cross federation said it had deployed seven emergency response units in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, providing clean water to nearly 500,000 people. It was its largest deployment of water and sanitation teams since it set up the emergency response system of its national societies 10 years ago, the federation said. ``After a major catastrophe, populations are particularly vulnerable to waterborne diseases, and our ability to produce large quantities of safe water and provide adequate sanitation quickly has been crucial in ensuring that these communities were not subjected to a second disaster,'' said Markku Niskala, secretary-general of the federation. This year's World Water Day marks the launching of the ``Water for Life'' decade, during which the United Nations and governments are seeking to halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Ministers and government representatives are scheduled to meet next month at the Commission for Sustainable Development's 13th session in New York to take policy decisions on practical measures to ensure access to water for people worldwide. ``We need to increase water efficiency, especially in agriculture. We need to free women and girls from the daily chore of hauling water, often over great distances,'' U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan said. The plan also aims to safeguard water for the future of the Earth's ecosystems, crucial for protecting and preserving biodiversity in freshwater lakes and rivers, mountain landscapes, wetlands, estuaries, coastal zones and oceans. links Related articles on Global issues: global warming issues, policies |
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